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This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post,

selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days:

selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad

Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

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it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Awww, thank you! High praise indeed.

One little quibble:

Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

a) Waiting for his fancy French saddle to be finished, presumably so he could escape in style? (What a primary source who doesn't like Katte has to say. I and others are highly skeptical.)
b) Destroying/hiding his own incriminating evidence, particularly those valuables Fritz had given him for safekeeping?
c) Hoping that the whole thing would blow over, believing fleeing would confirm his guilt but staying put might allow him to talk his way out of it, on the grounds that he *hadn't* actually deserted, and maybe all the evidence of him conspiring with foreign powers could be destroyed in time? <-- Highly plausible, if you ask me.
d) Not wanting to leave Fritz behind alone without even knowing what was going to happen to him?
e) Terribly indecisive about what the right move was? (I mean, he told Fritz he wouldn't go, tried to talk Fritz out of it, went along with the conspiring anyway, waited to get permission to leave Berlin, wouldn't sneak out without permission, told his interrogators that he would have sneaked out if he'd gotten word the Prince had made it out of Prussia safely, packed and got ready to flee Berlin when he knew his arrest was imminent, did not actually flee Berlin despite plenty of warning. Does not strike me as the most decisive personality in general. Probably a very laid-back kind of guy who got along with people as iron-willed as Fritz precisely because he wasn't constantly clashing with them. See for contrast: iron-willed Voltaire.)
f) Some combination of all of the above?

Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD

Yes and it's WORSE THAN THAT. The experiment was "can 40 cups of coffee totally obviate the need for sleep?" It was unsuccessful. The "coffee is best taken with mustard and peppercorns" thing was LIFELONG. He liked that shit into his 70s. Or drank it without liking it, no one's sure. I can't decide which would be weirder.

WTF, Fritz.

"rationalized sadism"

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

OMMMGGGG, I can't wait! Will be watching this space, you can count on it.

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

Well, I can see that we're going to have to share this with you! :DDDD

Trailer: Russians be crazy. (Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8.)

I'm so glad you're enjoying all this. My best friend is someone who likes to go on long trips with me and encourage me to ramble about my current favorite things. I always get self-conscious about the unlikelihood of other people being interested in hearing at great length whatever I'm currently most obsessed with, but apparently some people find my story-telling style entertaining and informative? Thank you for being one of them. <3 I'm happy to entertain with the slightest encouragement.

Edited 2019-08-20 19:17 (UTC)

Thank you and

selenak! This is amaaaaaaazing, as you said :)

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

lol, thanks, I have added a note to the post :)

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

ewwww no, I am an innocent, that didn't actually occur to me! "Rationalized sadism" is a quote from you (that selenak picked up in a later comment) :P But I guess it is a reasonable conclusion given that "sexual hangups" comes right after it...

I saw the note. :)

Okay, I didn't know if you had misinterpreted my phrasing, and I figured if I couldn't tell, others might not be able to, so I thought I'd clear that up. Glad we're all on the same non-squicky page.

Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8

On that note, talking about all of this, it occured to me that practically every royal in Europe of note in this story, other than the French royals pre-Marie Antoinette, were either German (for a qualification of German that includes Austrians) or half German. I mean, Farmer George was the first of the Hannovers who spoke English as his first language, George I didn't speak a word, and George II only picked it up later.

...but of course, they all wrote to each other in French. :) (Though I find it touching that Fritz, who usually hated the language, actually wrote German letters to Fredersdorf. The quotes in this article sound adorably awkward and tender, I don't think translation can get across how much precisely because the spelling is bad and the grammar is off: "Ich küsse den Docter, wan er Dihr gesundt macht! (...)ich wollte Dihr so gerne helffen, als das ich das leben habe". Let's see, I'll have a go to come up with something: "I kiss the Docter if he be healthy making you! (…) I wish so much to help you as life I have." But that makes Fritz sounds like Yoda in English, which, err, doesn't fit the personality.

Hmm, you're right. A side effect of there being 1 million German principalities of various kinds?

Aww, Fritz. <3 We see you trying.

That is adorable! No, I get the gist of it.

P.S. My passive command of German is juuuust good enough to follow how bad his German is, but thank you for the translation. :) (I can handle German spelling and syntax, it's the vocab where I fall down.)

While looking through W's memoirs just now to refresh my memory on a point of chronology, I happened upon her description of Katte's saddle, which reminds me that *she* says he was waiting because he needed a saddle that could hide papers and such, which makes iiiiiinfinitely more sense. I still think there has to be another way to escape than waiting for a new saddle to be made, but if you're already torn on what the right move is and probably not thinking clearly anyway, because PANIC, it might contribute to your delay.

Anyway, when I was about Fritz's age, I tried and failed to come up with a plan to escape from my non-absolute-monarch parents, so I am totally sympathetic to Fritz's failure to escape from the efficient and restrictive military state that was Prussia, and am willing to believe it represented a best effort. Katte was 26, yes, but he was much less invested in the escape, and potentially more interested in dragging his feet and hoping it went away than in coming up with the best plan ever.